Journey Towards Sustainability

While Lake Michigan salmon make their way up the Grand River, the 2019 Salmon Festival is continuing their journey towards sustainability. Building a festival that incorporates composting and recycling is just the start towards one of the most sustainable festivals in Michigan.

Dating back to 2007, the Salmon Festival started its initiative towards being a more “green” event. Since then, they have composted and recycled thousands of pounds of what would have otherwise been trash; and donated thousands of wine bottles to be reused for a variety of projects throughout the community.

The festival kicked-it-up a notch in 2011, with the creation of an official Green Team that was made up of six members from the local community that had an interest and/or had an expertise in sustainability. Composting stations were created with volunteers positioned at each one to educate the attendees on the importance of composting. World Centric compostable plates and utensils made from wheat grass and corn starch allowed attendees to go to the composting stations and conveniently toss everything into one bin. All materials from the Fish Boil was able to be processed by Chef Container, a local compost, recycle and refuse company based out of Holland, Michigan.

In 2012, the festival worked even harder to continue to educate the vendors and patrons through the use of signage and handouts of the importance of sustainability. Everything used for the Fish Boil, Salmon Cook-Off & Wine Tasting, and Entertainment Tent was compostable; plates, utensils, cups, napkins, liners and food. Compared to 2011, in 2012 the festival decreased the amount of refuse that went to the landfill by over 42%, or 3,060 pounds. All of the materials composted by Chef Container are put in a specific location dedicated to Salmon Festival. This allows Chef Container to provide feedback to the Festival Committee on how well the products are composting and able to provide more in depth analysis of the efforts. In November 2012, the Grand Haven Salmon Festival was awarded the 1st Place blue ribbon for “Best Green Practices” at the Michigan Festivals & Events Association annual conference in Traverse City, Michigan.

In 2013, our festival’s goal was to become a zero-waste-to-landfill event by our 10th Anniversary event. Our planning committee, Green Team, sponsors, partners, and volunteers worked diligently to decrease the total amount of waste produced at festival and focused on composting all waste possible. New this year, we looked at new ways we could defer waste where possible. Instead of recycling our hundreds of wine bottles, we offered them to local home winemakers & crafters for free to be upcycled into something new. Instead of composting our six bushels of stomped grapes from the Purple Romp Grape Stomp, we offered them for free to local home winemakers. Due to all of our dedication and efforts – including a little bit of dumpster diving – there were only a few lonely bags in our massive trash dumpster at the end of the weekend. Five years ago, this dumpster would have been a heaping mountain of trash headed straight for the landfill.

Chef Container was absolutely shocked at our event’s progress with our composting and recycling efforts. However, they were even more impressed with our overall reduction of total waste since we started working with them in 2011. In 2013, we only produced less than 300 pounds of refuse that was unable to be composted or recycled. As a gift, Chef Container sent our remaining refuse to be processed in a Waste-To-Energy Incinerator officially making us a zero-waste-to-landfill event! In 2014, we only had 40 pounds of refuse that was unable to be composted or recycled. Wow! We were thrilled with that outcome and hope to continue the good work into 2015.

The Salmon Festival also uses 100% organic cotton t-shirts for all of their volunteers. By doing so, they divert up to three pounds of pesticides it could take to make a single cotton t-shirt.

In 2016, the Grand Haven Salmon Festival was awarded the first ever Pure Award at the Pure Michigan Governor’s Conference on Tourism for our efforts in making our event zero waste to landfill.

For the future, the festival also plans on tracking and recording how much energy is used throughout the event to determine where they can reduce their carbon footprint to make the Salmon Festival a more eco-friendly event with zero waste.

2012
– 57% of festival waste was composted or recycled
– Reduced our total waste by over 52% or 3,000 pounds compared to 2011’s event

2013
– Almost 80% of festival waste was composted or recycled
– Reduced our total waste by an additional 1,300 pounds compared to 2012’s event
– As a gift from Chef Container, our remaining trash was sent to the Waste To Energy Incinerator making us their very first zero-waste-to-landfill event! We did it!!!

2014– 97% of the festival waste was either composted or recycled
– Event waste breakdown: 1,180lbs composted, 160lbs recycle, 40lbs refuse
– Our remaining 40lbs in trash was sent to the Waste To Energy Incinerator making us a zero-waste-to-landfill event for the second year in a row!

2015-97% of the festival waste was composted or recycled
– Event waste breakdown: 1,160lbs composted, 330lbs recycled, and 52lbs of refuse.
– The remaining 52lbs of refuse was sent to the waste to energy incinerator.

2016
– 97% of the festival waste was composted or recycled.
– Event waste breakdown: 1,180lbs composted, 160lbs recycled, and 40lbs of refuse.
– The remaining 40lbs in refuse was sent to the waste to energy incinerator.
– We reduced overall festival waste by over 150lbs from the year before!
– We won the first ever Pure Award at the Pure Michigan Governor’s Conference on Tourism!

2017– 97.5% of the festival waste was composted or recycled.
– Event waste breakdown: 1,310lbs composted, 440lbs recycled, and 44.7lbs of refuse.
– The remaining 44.7lbs of refuse was sent to the WTE (waste to energy) incinerator.
– We had an increase of 414lbs of this year due the higher attendance.

2018– 98% of the festival waste was composted or recycled.
– Event waste breakdown: 840lbs composted, 580lbs recycled, and 28lbs of refuse.
– The remaining 28lbs of refuse was sent to the WTE (waste to energy) incinerator.
– We had a decrease of 346lbs of total waste this year due to better planning and lower attendance.